Rep. Thomas Massie, the maverick Republican facing a primary challenge from Ed Gallrein in Tuesday’s Kentucky primary, has earned goodwill from progressives and Democrats for standing up to President Donald Trump on the Epstein files and opposing the Iran war.
Melissa Strange, one of the two candidates in the Democratic primary for the 4th Congressional District, held by Massie, told Raw Story she’s seen Democrats and progressives in Kentucky rooting for Massie from the sidelines.
“I have seen plenty of them, when they post on social media, and I have heard plenty of them say in front of me: ‘People need to vote for Massie. We need him to survive the primary,’” Strange said.
Elsewhere in the country, Ryan Bussie, a Democratic congressional candidate in Montana, has praised Massie for being “courageous bucking his party on the Epstein thing,” while citing former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — a Republican who occupied a similar political space to Massie before her retirement — as a model because “she didn’t play by the rules.”
But Massie’s extremism and embrace of conspiracy theories is well known. He posted a photo of his family posing with military-style rifles in front of a Christmas tree only days after a deadly 2021 school shooting in Michigan, compared vaccine mandates to the Holocaust, and aggressively spread the false “fedsurrection” conspiracy theory suggesting the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol was an inside job.
And Dakota Adams, a progressive Democrat whose father founded the far-right Oath Keepers that played a pivotal role in the Jan. 6 attack, warned that Democrats are playing a dangerous game by allowing themselves to be drawn in by Massie.
“It’s a delicious narcotic, and it’s incredibly dangerous for anyone in the Democratic Party to think Massie is an ally,” said Adams, who ran unsuccessfully as a Democrat for a Montana state legislative district in 2024. “There is no bridge-building with the Republican Party.”
Adams’ father, whom he has disowned, posed for a photo at a campaign stop with Massie in Kentucky last week. Rhodes was convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in the Jan. 6 attack, but Trump commuted his sentence almost immediately after returning to the White House in 2025.
Shaking the Oath Keeper leader’s hand during the campaign stop in LaGrange, Kentucky, on May 15, Massie reportedly told him, “Sorry for everything you’ve been through.”
Adams told Raw Story he views the handshake as a “transaction,” with each man seeking to maintain their credibility with the Republican Party’s far-right base as they look towards a future without Trump.
“Stewart is trying to put himself into a position where he can execute a post-Trump pivot,” Adams said. “Massie needs to shore himself up as someone who is down and cool with the far right, but without needing to rely on Trump’s endorsement to do that.”
The danger for the progressives in getting roped into Massie’s far-right repositioning, Adams said, is that they could inadvertently wind up lending support to an authoritarian takeover far more ruthless and effective than what Trump has been able to accomplish.
Adams said he views the decision by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) to team up with Massie to force the release of the Epstein files as “a good, strategic move that did damage to Trump.”
But he added, “In the future, if, for example, there’s a second insurrection to keep [Vice President JD] Vance in the White House, they risk embracing somebody who could potentially be on the side of the insurrection for the much worse sequel in 2029.”
The Massie campaign did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
Contrary to fellow Democrats who are rooting for Massie, Strange said she views a Gallrein win as both a higher risk and a higher potential reward for Democrats. She argued that Gallrein would face difficulty garnering general election votes from not only Democrats and independents, but also from many Republicans.
Strange told Raw Story many of the Kentucky Democrats and independents who have “softened” on Massie because of his defiance of Trump have been “blinded.” She said they’re overlooking his vote against the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill that included critical funding to replace an aging Interstate 75 bridge linking the 4th District to Cincinnati.
Jesse Brewer, Strange’s opponent in the Democratic primary, told Raw Story he wants voters to focus on the needs of the people in the 4th District, not the national politics surrounding Massie. In the case of Brewer, a cancer survivor, that means pursuing his goal of achieving single-payer healthcare.
“It’s easy to be seduced by a person with bad intentions who is a good politician,” Brewer said. “For example, look at MAGA and Trump: They were seduced by Trump, and it was all bad intentions, but he did it well.”